“Businesslike” is not a glamorous term. “Businesslike” does not inspire, it doesn’t imply courage, drama, panache or anything but a slow, predictable drive to the finish. And yet, “businesslike” seems to be the name of the new game being played on Schoellkopf Field.

Last season was definitely not businesslike. The Red started 2008 with a sparkling 3-0 record, driven by a blocked field goal against Bucknell, a rain-soaked Homecoming defensive performance for the ages against Ivy favorite Yale, and the fantastic climax of a now-famous promise by wideout Jesse Baker ’09 to quarterback Nathan Ford ’09 — “See you in the end zone.” With Cornell down, 24-19, and facing a fourth-and-20 with four seconds remaining in the game, Ford connected with Baker, his favorite deep threat, to give the Red a walk-off win at Lehigh.

The Ivy League was turned on its head. Upstarts Cornell and Brown, boasting an explosive offense, seemed to be the cream of the Ancient Eight, with wins over perennial powerhouses Yale and Harvard. Then, after the electric start, the Red fizzled out.

Cornell was outplayed by Harvard on Versus TV to a final score of 38-17. The Crimson countered the Red’s frequent blitzes and Harvard’s senior quarterback Chris Pizzotti burned Cornell’s secondary for 281 passing yards and three touchdowns in just 23 pass attempts. As the days got colder, so did the football team. The next game was an embarrassing 38-22 loss to Colgate that saw the Raiders run wild over Schoellkopf Field. Colgate racked up 600 yards on offense, including 345 on the ground. Of those 345, Raider freshman Nate Eachus logged 241, increasing his career total tenfold.

According to the records, there were still five games left on the Red’s 2008 schedule, plenty of time to improve its 3-2 record. But the rest of season was as forgettable as the first three games were memorable. Excepting a 37-14 win over dreadful Dartmouth, which finished the year 0-10, Cornell was outscored 98-46 in the second half of the season. A perfect 3-0 launch crash-landed into a 1-6 finish and the early promise of 2008 was as frozen as the Ithaca landscape. The team didn’t score a single touchdown in its final game, a 23-6 loss to Penn at home on Senior Day.

Arguably the saddest subplot to the 4-6 2008 season was the talent gone to waste. Ford, one of 13 senior starters on the team, became the second-most prolific passer in Cornell’s long history with 2,815 career yards through the air. Baker and classmate wide receiver Zac Canty both caught more than 100 career passes for over 1,000 yards. Linebacker Graham Rihn and safeties Tim Bax and Gus Krimm, all Class of 2009, anchored a veteran defense that was predicted to have no weak links. So what led this promising football team so far off track?

“We felt we had a problem with leadership and with accepting less than our best,” Knowles said. “The culture of Cornell football is, let’s face it, it’s been average at best in recent years.”

So the sixth-year head coach shook things up. He instituted grueling morning workouts (named the Standards of Excellence) and replaced team captains with a 19-person leadership council.

“We wanted to find a way to raise the bar, set a standard on how we do things, whether it’s how we keep our locker room,” Knowles said, “… or how we handle ourselves socially, how we practice, how we play games in the fourth quarter. To signify that, we started getting up at 6 in the morning. We bumped it up to 5:30 after one particular day didn’t go so well.”

Conditioning and, well, excellence, were at the heart of the Standards. Half-hearted efforts in workouts or drills were unacceptable.

“If there’s a cone and you have to finish past it, don’t stop in front of it,” Knowles explained. “If you have to touch the line on a turn, touch the line. If you have to go from one drill to another, sprint — don’t jog. Any time someone didn’t do that, the whole group had to pay. There were times in the beginning when there were no drills going on because everyone was doing up-downs.”

The result? A football team that claims to be in its best shape ever and a recommitment to the running game and the deep, talented backfield led by senior running back Randy Barbour.

Devotion to the ground game is about as businesslike as you can get in a football game. It’s a low-risk, low-reward strategy that ends every play with a pile of bodies just a few yards from where they all started. It eats up clock time, shortening and simplifying games.

A relevant footnote that was lost in the wreckage of 2008: Last year’s plan was also to get back to the running game.

“[Last season] we had no staying power,” Knowles said. “Our leadership was not strong enough. Our team was not tight enough. We weren’t taking care of our business off of the field as well as we should have. All of those things take a toll in the hard parts of the game, including running the ball. There’s nothing easy about running the ball at any level. Conditioning helps.”

So does diligent, focused practice.

“I’m coaching a lot calmer than I’ve ever been,” Knowles said. “I think our team is catching on to that. There’s not a lot of fooling around in practice, there’s not a lot of highs and lows, it’s really workmanlike, businesslike. I’m excited about that because I’m an emotional coach and sometimes the teams picks up that personality. We’ve had these great killer wins and then we’ve been up and down. I’m looking for things to be more level this year.”

After last year’s rollercoaster ride, Knowles and Co. are hoping a level, businesslike ap­proach might spur the Red to even higher peaks, while avoiding those lowest of depths.